The New York Yankees have demoted Anthony Volpe to Triple-A.

Volpe was on a rehab assignment for his left shoulder surgery. The 20-day rehab window expired, meaning the Yankees had to place him on the 26-man roster or demote him to Triple-A.

Volpe had a .250 batting average and a .306 on-base percentage in 13 rehab games in the minor leagues. The Yankees have to use one of their option years to keep him in the minor leagues. MLB players have three option years where they can be demoted to the minor leagues without being able to reject the demotion.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone cited the play of Jose Caballero as a reason for keeping Volpe in the minor leagues. Caballero has four home runs, 12 RBIs and a .259 batting average this season. In his last 17 games, he has a .333 batting average, .385 on-base percentage and a .517 slugging percentage. 

Caballero has also played great defense at shortstop. This season, he has three outs above average, the third-most in the American League for shortstops. 

Last season, Volpe had a .212 batting average, .272 on-base percentage and a .391 slugging percentage. Volpe started the season with a .319 on-base percentage. However, after June 1, he had a .240 on-base percentage.

What was more concerning was Volpe’s decline on defense. In 2025, he had negative six outs above average. He won the American League Gold Glove Award at shortstop in 2023 and was a finalist for the award in 2024. 

During spring training, the Yankees’ medical staff said they believed Volpe’s defensive struggles were due to playing through a left shoulder injury. Although Volpe throws right-handed, a shoulder injury in the left arm can make it difficult for a shortstop to properly glove the ball. 

New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected from Monday’s game against the Chicago White Sox after complaining about a number of strike calls from umpire Laz Diaz. With six ejections on the season, Boone is tied for most in MLB this season and is on pace to break his league-leading nine ejections in 2022.

The incident occurred in the top of the eighth inning after shortstop Anthony Volpe struck out looking. During his argument with Diaz, which included a number of expletives before and after the ejection, Boone marked areas in the left-handed batter’s box, seemingly to note particularly egregious strike calls.

“You f–-king stink,” Boone yelled during a part of the dispute picked up on the broadcast.

In addition to marking the batter’s box during his rant, Boone also imitated Diaz’s strikeout call in an animated fashion. While a review of Volpe’s at-bat showed that the pitch Boone argued was, in fact, a strike, Umpire Scorecards also concluded that Diaz made several calls throughout the game that significantly hurt the Yankees. He only called strikes with 66% accuracy throughout the contest.

Though the Yankees were hindered by poor umpiring, the team also had several opportunities to score and failed to do so. New York went quietly to the White Sox, now 46-68 this season, and fell even further in the Wild Card standings. With a 58-55 record, the Yankees are last in the AL East and are 5.5 games out of a playoff spot.

When Aaron Judge returned from injury last month, some hoped that his presence would revitalize the offense, but that has not occurred. The team has scored 4.1 runs per game on average since July 15, well below the top scorers over the course of the entire season. In that span, New York has only scored more than seven runs five times and lost two of those games.